Margaret Heffernan and Steven D’Souza

Life coaches Margaret Heffernan and Steven D’Souza discuss ways of unlocking your personal potential including through harnessing uncertainty and recognising and embracing our darker side.

Heffernan has worked as a radio and television producer and as a chief executive of media technology companies. She mentors senior executives and is a professor of practice at the University of Bath. In Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive in an Unpredictable World, she urges us to learn from and think like creatives. Heffernan says most people hate and fear the uncertainty that permeates our everyday life. However, she says that artists embrace uncertainty and produce work that challenges our experience of life. We can be guided by their creativity, boldness, resilience and discipline.

D’Souza is an executive coach and writer, who initially trained as a priest. He has worked with senior leaders at AMEX, Goldman Sachs, the Financial Times and PwC. In Shadows at Work: Harness Your Dark Side and Unlock your Leadership Potential, he looks at the shadow traits at work relegated to our subconscious such as narcissism, bullying, boastfulness, jealousy, anger and self-sabotage. D’Souza says we need to be just as familiar with our shadows as with our light if we are to fully unlock our potential as leaders and be better human beings. Confronting uncomfortable truths about ourselves will help us to bring our whole embodied self to work.